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October 5, 2011

Homemade Applesauce

I picked up a bushel of Empire apples at the MSU horticulture farm fruit sale last Friday. I wanted to get a mixture of apples for making applesauce, but we weren't allowed to mix bushels together. I was told that Empire would be a good combination of tart and sweet (I like somewhat tart applesauce and I didn't want to have to add any extra sugar).

After looking at these photos, I'm really glad I washed the apples...look at all that bluish pesticide residue!

Since I have my awesome Roma food strainer, I didn't have to peel or core my apples. I just hacked each apple into about 8 pieces.

The apple chunks then went into a big pot with a little bit of water to simmer and soften.

After the apples were softened, I transferred them to the food strainer.

A simple turn of the crank, and the apples were pureed and the skins, cores, and seeds removed.

All the skins, cores, and seeds were separated from the apple pulp. This mess went into my compost bin. I thought about giving it to the chickens, but apple seeds contain cyanide compounds that can be bad in large quantities (such as this).

The pureed apples were then brought to a boil on the stove and then canned in water bath canner.

Two batches later and I got 8 pints and 6 quarts of applesauce! And, I still have another 8-10 pounds of apples left.

5 comments:

My sisters and I canned so much apple sauce a year or so ago from my one apple tree, it was not getting eaten,so we have been cooking it down into apple butter.We use that in Fried Apple Pies which we have no trouble moving. You can never fry enough FAP.They are a big hit anytime,anywhere.

When it comes to playing around in the kitchen, I put on my lazy hat and look for shortcuts. Your method of making apple sauce seems like too much work but I’m sure it’s the right way to do it.

When I ended up with more apples than I could handle from the huge tree in my backyard, I dumped a big bunch into my juicer to make delicious fresh apple juice. Easy!

I took another big bunch of apples, placed them on cookie sheets and baked them. Very Easy!

The final batch of apples was treated to a knife that cut away the peel and core and dumped into the blender which resulted in pureed apples. I then added some brown sugar and cinnamon and had myself a batch of apple sauce done the easy way.

Whatever remained of the freshly harvested apples were eaten whole by my family, friends and neighbors.